


tell my love to wreck it all

by thingswithteeth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithteeth/pseuds/thingswithteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Grant Stilinski meets the woman who will one day become his wife, she’s dripping wet in a public fountain, with a half empty bottle of Jack in her hand. He’s trying to decide if  he should arrest her for public indecency or public drunkenness, and whether she’ll take a swing at him with that bottle if he tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting

            The first time Grant Stilinski meets the woman who will one day become his wife, she’s dripping wet in a public fountain, with a half empty bottle of Jack in her hand. He’s trying to decide if he should arrest her for public indecency or public drunkenness, and whether she’ll brain him with that bottle of hers if he tries. She already looks like she’s considering taking a swing at his deputy, although given the way Delaney is staring at her nearly transparent white t-shirt instead of her face, Grant really can’t blame her for that one.

            Not that the sight isn’t one worth staring at, but Grant’s mama raised him right. He keeps his eyes firmly on her face and the potentially deadly weapon in her hand. After a moment, she seems to decide that she’d rather drink from the bottle than use it to commit violence, and she takes a swig. Grant is relieved, even though he doesn’t think she needs to be drinking any more, because he really doesn’t want to have to add assault to the list of charges he’s compiling in his head. The paperwork is going to be bad enough as it is.

            “Aw, shit,” she says, once she’s lowered the bottle. She says it like she’s proclaiming some kind of grand and portentous decision, and Grant wonders what prompted her to speak. It’s not being confronted by two officers of the law, that’s for sure, because he and Delaney have been standing there for the past two minutes, mostly gaping at the strange woman standing ankle-deep in the ornamental fountain in front of City Hall, her jeans rolled up around her calves and her dark brown curls and t-shirt both soaked through by the spray. There are a set of dog tags gleaming silver against the t-shirt (which Grant is not looking at, goddamnit) and he wonders idly if they’re for real, or some kind of bizarre fashion statement that he’s just not nearly hip enough to understand.

            Years later, Grant will not tell Stiles that the first thing his mother said to his father was, “aw, shit,” nor that the first thing Grant said to her was, “Ma’am, I think it’d be best if you stepped out of the fountain.”

            She looks directly at him then, the first time she’s done so since he and Delaney responded to the call. Her eyes are as dark as her hair, set under a pair of heavy brows. She’s not pretty, not really, face a little too thin and mouth a little too wide, but her gaze is _intense_ , even muddled by liquor as she is, and when she drags her teeth over the full curve of her lower lip – he looks. He sort of can’t help it.

            The teeth set and stay there, and she considers him almost thoughtfully. She sloshes the whiskey around in the bottle, and for a moment he’s convinced that she’s going to refuse. Then she shrugs and takes a slightly unsteady step toward the edge of the fountain. “Fine. The pennies were starting to dig into my feet anyway. Who the hell put pennies in the bathtub?”

            “Probably some idiot mistook it for a fountain,” Grant says dryly, and steps forward to help her over the lip of the fountain. He sees a glint of humor in her eyes, and he wonders if she’s as drunk as he originally thought, or at the very least if she’s as incapacitated by drink as he originally thought. As if to prove him right, she shrugs his hand off of her elbow and barely stumbles at all when she climbs out from the fountain under her own power. Her bare feet leave dark smears against the concrete, and she smiles up at him, undeniably proud of her accomplishment. “Don’t worry about me, Officer,” she squints at the nametag pinned to the front of his uniform, then closes one eye, which Grant takes to mean she’s seeing two nametags instead of one, “Bilinski. I can hold my drink.”

            “It’s Undersheriff Bilinski, actually,” Delaney says helpfully, and Grant shoots him an entirely unimpressed look. When he turns back to the woman, she looks equally unimpressed. She takes another pull from her bottle, which prompts him to reach up and gently tug it from her grasp.

            She makes a quiet, protesting noise, and stares at him sullenly for a moment. “I was gonna share,” she says.

            Grant gives the bottle to Delaney so he’ll have his hands free. He pretends not to hear Delaney’s muttered comment of, “That’s awfully generous of you, Stilinski.” Instead of hearing and having to acknowledge Delaney being kind of a jackass, Grant shrugs out of his jacket and offers it to the woman. She just looks at him, one brow arched, even though her arms are wrapped around her stomach and he can see the gooseflesh forming on her skin. California at night in November is not warm, no matter what the tourist brochures that they hand out at the Beacon Hills Visitors Bureau say.

            “What,” she says, and he thinks she’s going to ask about the jacket until the words that follow turn out to be, “the hell kind of name is Bilinski, anyway?”

            “Polish, I think,” Delaney says, at the same moment that Grant sighs and says, “It’s _St_ ilinski, actually.” Delaney snorts, and the sound is distinctly amused, which Grant takes to mean he’s on his own with this one, since his colleague is finding the proceedings a little too _funny_ to actually be helpful. To be fair, Grant might find it funny too, if he wasn’t the one fishing drunk girls out of fountains at just-shy-of-midnight. As it is, he just sighs again and tosses his jacket around her shoulders, trying not to touch her anywhere inappropriate as he twitches the edges into place.

            When he pulls back, she’s smiling at him a little, like maybe Delaney isn’t the only one who finds the whole situation hilarious, and – that’s just great. Even the drunk girl is laughing at him. “Do _you_ have a name, ma’am? Maybe some ID?”

            She glances over her shoulder, and Grant follows her gaze. In the dark, it takes a moment for him to spot the wallet floating on the top of the water, like a sad little tugboat. Grant bites back another sigh, because his mama might’ve been the one to raise him right but he doesn’t want to actually turn into her. He considers checking the dog tags around the woman’s neck for her name but, given Delaney’s earlier staring, Grant doesn’t think that will go over too well.

            “Estere,” the woman says. “Estere Barzani.” When he looks at her, her eyes are focused and intent on his face. Her mouth is still turned up a bit at the corner, and when she sticks her arms out from beneath his jacket and presses her wrists together in front of her, it takes him a moment to realize that she’s expecting him to cuff her.

            “Christ.”

            “Huh.” She uses one hand to scratch idly at her collarbone and lets the other drop back to her side. “Not a comparison anyone else has made, but if that’s what does it for you.”

            He shakes his head at her, and it only takes him a few seconds to consider the hour and come to a decision. He glances over his shoulder at the smirking Delaney. “I don’t want to fill out the paperwork. Do you want to fill out the paperwork?”

            Delaney doesn’t take long to catch on. “I think a warning will do it, sir. Since she’s a first time offender, and all.” They both pretend not to hear Estere’s sharp bark of laughter at that. “Might be, we didn’t see a woman bathing in the City Hall fountain at all.”

            That kind of turn-the-other-way thinking isn’t something that Grant tries to encourage, but he also doesn’t do much more than rattle the cages of the kids he catches skinny dipping in the pond out by the Hale place when Jessica Hale calls it in, and he doesn’t figure this is much different. It’s not like Estere was hurting anyone, unless thinking of hitting Delaney counts, and since Grant is kind of absently thinking of hitting Delaney, himself, he’d be as guilty as she is.

            He rubs a hand across his face and says, “Fine, good.” Estere’s head is tilted when he returns his attention to her, watching them with a sort idle fascination, as if he and Delaney discussing politely ignoring the law is the most interesting thing to happen all night. “Where are your shoes?” he asks, since that seems to be the most pressing question when he can see water seeping through and leaving dark marks against the thick fabric of his jacket. “You have shoes, right?”

            “Of course I have shoes,” she says, and Grant isn’t entirely certain that he deserves the frankly disdainful look she sends his way before she leads him and Delaney around the edge of the fountain. Sure enough, there are a pair of heavy brown work boots sitting on the ground. There’s also a suitcase, a backpack, and, incongruously, a large pink-and-blue hatbox. Grant stares at the luggage with a sense of deep foreboding.

            “Where are you staying, ma’am?” he asks.

            “You’ve got my name,” Estere says, from where she’s sat herself down on the edge of the fountain. She appears to be more interested in figuring out the laces on her boots than talking to him. “Use it. And I’m _not_ staying. Or I wasn’t, until my boyfriend dumped my ass at the side of the road.” She gives up on the laces, and just shoves her foot into the shoe, wiggling until it pops into place. She repeats the process with the other shoe, and scoops up the socks that had been lying beside them before standing. For a moment, she looks confusedly down at the socks, but then she just shrugs and stuffs them into the pocket of Grant’s jacket. Grant considers protesting, but really, he’s probably put worse than that in his pockets. “You boys point me in the direction of the closest hotel, and I’ll get out of your hair.” Her gaze skims over Delaney’s receding hairline, and she smiles brilliantly before adding, “Well, out of Stilinski’s hair.”

            Delaney looks less amused now, which means that Grant is feeling pretty forgiving of the fact that she’s evidently known his name from the start and has just been having fun abusing it. “Sorry about the boyfriend,” he says, mostly because that seems like the thing to say.

            “Don’t be,” she says. “He was a dipshit. Only dipshits leave a girl by the side of the road in the middle of the night, right?” She smiles lazily at him. “Besides, I might’ve had enough to drink before you broke up my little party to be feeling no pain. I’ve got to piss like mad, though, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell me about that hotel right about now.”

            “She’s riding in your car,” Delaney says immediately, before Grant has done more than consider in passing the possibility of giving her a ride where she’s going. He’s going to, though, and not just because of her somewhat pointed comment about dipshits who leave women stranded in the middle of the night.

            Maybe not-so-pointed, because she looks a mildly baffled when he grabs her suitcase from the sidewalk. She recovers quicker than he would have expected, given that she’s swaying a little bit on her feet, and just motions gamely for him to lead the way.

            Grant sighs. So he sounds like his mother. That’s sort of to be expected when everyone around him is making him feel about a million years old, even though Delany has a good two decades on him and Estere doesn’t look to be more than a handful of years younger than Grant is. “Go ahead, Delaney. I think I have it covered from here.”

            “You sure?” Delaney says. “She could be dangerous.”

            Grant remembers a time, not so very long ago, when he had thought that being undersheriff would mean the respect and admiration of his coworkers. God help him, he knows it’s wrong, but he _misses_ that sweet little delusion. “Go.”

            Delaney goes, which is for the best, because Grant is pretty sure the deputy was supposed to clock out half an hour ago and the department has a pretty firm _no overtime, we can’t afford to pay you as it is_ policy. He scoops up the backpack and, when Estere makes no move to help, manages to shove the hatbox between his elbow and his side.

            “I’d help, I would, really,” she says, biting the words off around a smile, “but if I lean over, I’m not sure I’ll be able to un-lean. I’ll fall, and I won’t be able to get up. Like in those commercials.” Then, apropos of nothing, she adds, “Man, I _miss_ those commercials.”

            Grant doesn’t want to know, but he feels strangely compelled to ask. _“Why?”_

            “Because watching old people fall over is hilarious. Why else?”

            She’s actually a little horrifying.

            They make it all the way to his patrol car before he remembers her wallet floating in the fountain, and doubles back to fish it out. By the time he returns, his own shirt is soaked to the elbow and she’s leaning serenely against his car, a cigarette hanging listlessly from between her lips. “You’re putting that out before you get in my car,” he warns her. She shrugs and flicks the cigarette out into the darkness of the road, the burning red ember at the tip flaring briefly before going out. He really should cite her for littering, but closer examination shows that his moral compass is pointing toward home instead of toward _spend an additional five minutes writing her up and dealing with any resulting drunk drama_. Which, no. Just no.

            He manages to pour her and her belongings both into his squad car. She examines the inside of the car with limited interest. “Can we turn on the sirens?”

            “No.”

            “Why not?”

            Grant closes his eyes. He’s not much of a praying man, but if he were, he’d be praying for patience. “Those are for emergencies.”

            “The possibility of me peeing on your seat doesn’t count?”

            They compromise: he turns on the lights but not the siren. It doesn’t really matter, since Beacon Hills is mostly quiet at night, and there aren’t that many cars on the road. Those they do pass pull up onto the shoulder with little fuss, and Grant barely feels guilty at all.

            She climbs out of the car as soon as he stops in front of the Beacon Hills Budget Motel. It’s cheap, and even though the sign in front has been advertising color TV and pay-by-the-hour rates for the past decade, it’s also surprisingly clean and well-maintained, probably because Beacon Hills doesn’t actually have a whole hell of a lot in the way of vice-related crime. Estere’s mouth twitches as she surveys the motel, but she doesn’t say a thing, just thumps the base of her hand against his trunk until he pulls the release and the trunk pops open. She’s still a little unsteady on her feet as she tugs her bags and the hatbox out and tosses them carelessly on the sidewalk in front of the motel. With that done, she comes around and taps on his window. He rolls it down.

            “I don’t know what Stilinski means,” she says, casually, like that isn’t the biggest non-sequitur, and like she hasn’t spent the last ten minutes insisting that she has a life-or-death bathroom crisis. “What’s your first name?”

            There’s not really any harm in telling her. “Grant.”

            She makes a low, considering noise. “Boring,” she finally decides. “It just means _great_ or _large_.” He just stares at her, unsure of how to respond to that. She smiles, her wide mouth curling up in one corner, and he ends up feeling a little bit like she’s laughing at him. “Names are important, Stilinski. They tell us where we come from. Sometimes they even tell us where we’re going. Names have power.”

            Grant clears his throat. “Okay.” He’s disturbed, though he can’t put his finger quite on why. She’s shrugging out of his jacket, stuffing it through his window with very little ceremony. By the time he’s shoved the wet fabric out of his face and onto the passenger’s seat, she’s already gathered her bags from the sidewalk. “You can keep the jacket ‘til tomorrow, if you want,” he says, because she’s shivering already, narrow shoulders hunched in a little. “Just drop it by the station. Someone will make sure it gets back to me.”

            This time, the smile Estere sends his way is bright and flashing, less like she’s lording some secret joke over his head. “I don’t plan on staying that long. I’ll be gone in the morning, save you the trouble of rousing the locals with their pitchforks and torches.” Her hands are full, so she doesn’t wave, but she does jerk her chin at him before she turns and disappears into the motel’s front office.

            “I don’t even own a pitchfork,” Grant mutters, but he decides he’ll be glad to see the last of her.

 

*

 

            She doesn’t leave town.

            The next time he sees her, she’s behind the bar at JB’s Tavern, where he and some of the boys from the sheriff’s department will sometimes stop for a beer after they finish a shift. Grant is alone this time, and it takes him a longer moment than he’s proud of to fully process the fact that his fountain swimmer is behind the bar, with a towel slung over her shoulder and looking for all the world as if she belongs there, her hands spread wide as she says something to Jessica Hale, who’s seated on one of the bar stools.

            That’s a little surprising on its own, since the Hales don’t tend to come out and mix much with the locals. There’s a mechanic over at Armor Tire and Service who’s distantly related to them somehow and who has an apartment in town, but otherwise the Hales stick to themselves and the big house they have out in the woods; even the kids seem to prefer the company of each other to that of any of their schoolmates. They’re nice enough, Grant has always thought, even though Jesse and her husband both have a list of misdemeanors as long as Grant’s arm, and he honest-to-God once caught the mechanic wandering around butt naked out on Lincoln Drive one morning last year. The young man had smiled at him, shrugged apologetically, and said, “Wild night. Don’t suppose you could give me a lift home?” Grant had written him up a citation but had also given him the requested ride, because wandering around naked after a party was exactly how Bobby Finstock down at the high school had lost a ball, and no one wanted a repeat of that.

            Grant stops Jo Beth, who owns the tavern, with a hand on her elbow. “New bartender?”

            She looks annoyed, but Jo Beth usually looks annoyed, so he ignores it. “Yeah. She’s got a mouth on her, but she knows what she’s doing, which is more than I can say for Mr. I’m-fresh-from-grad-school-bow-before-my-academic-prowess. You know he quit last week? Out of the blue and mid-shift. Said he had to _find_ himself. I’m going to tell his _mother_.”

            That, of course, is the ongoing danger of living in a not small but not very large town: if you cross someone, there’s a better than average chance that he or she knows your mother.

            Grant nods his thanks and leaves Jo Beth to mutter about men who can split the atom in their sleep but can’t mix a Manhattan if their lives depend on it, because he knows better than to quibble with her over details, even though he’s well aware that a) her former bartender studied chemistry, not nuclear physics, and b) it’s possible that no one has ever, in the forty years that the bar has been on this spot, ordered anything more complicated than a beer or a shot of whiskey neat. Grant values his life and, more than that, he values his ability to drink at JB’s in peace; neither of these things are guaranteed if he crosses Jo Beth. She holds a grudge.

            “...so my sergeant turns to me,” Estere is saying to Jesse, her hand twisting through the air in some arbitrary way that’s undoubtedly meant to illustrate whatever story she’s telling, “and he asks me to _translate_. I just look at him, and I’m all, ‘Sir, I’m from _Chattanooga_.’ He doesn’t even blink, he just frowns at me and goes, ‘That’s what, about twenty clicks outside Khafji?’ I—.” She stops when Grant reaches the bar, which is sort of a shame. He wouldn’t have minded hearing how the story ends.

            “Second thoughts about not arresting me?” Estere asks, and Jesse’s gaze swings toward him. The Hales are good enough folks, but Grant’s always preferred to deal with Jesse’s husband. She’s the clan matriarch if there is such a thing, and he’d never admit it out loud, but she unnerves him a little. She has this way of smiling – all teeth, no humor. “You can’t,” Estere continues blithely. “No take-backsies. It’s the law.”

            “I’m pretty sure that’s not true,” Jesse murmurs, and she actually seems amused. She’s smiling, and there are no teeth involved.

            “Well, it’s a rule.”

            “Mmm,” Jesse says, “yes. My five-year-old son likes to think so, too. You two would get along beautifully.” She slides off of her stool and offers Estere a hand. “It was good to meet you. I like to meet people who are... new to town. This has been very educational.”

            “Of course,” Estere says, and there’s an edge to her voice that Grant doesn’t understand. “I wouldn’t even think of moving in without introducing myself to the locals. The ones who matter, anyway. It’s not the done thing.”

            Jesse lets go and turns away, but not before nodding in acknowledgement to Grant. Her blue eyes are cool, a little reserved, but not unfriendly. If Grant relaxes a hair once she’s through the door, no one has to know about it but him. He takes the barstool she vacated and slings his jacket over the back; it’s cold outside, but Jo Beth keeps the inside of the bar almost uncomfortably hot. Estere is in a tank top, the sharp edges of her collarbones and the lean muscle of her arms visible, and she’s still got a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead.

            “Decided to stay after all?” he asks. “Should I look into investing in a pitchfork?”

            “Maybe,” she says, and smiles, and it doesn’t occur to him until later to wonder which of the questions she’s answering.

 

*

 

            Estere stays. She moves into the apartment over JB’s, where Jo Beth had lived right up until she’d had her second kid and decided that one bedroom just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. She buys a baby blue Jeep CJ-5 that’s probably only a few years younger than she is from the seediest use car dealership in town, and it spends the next two weeks parked inside of Armor Tire and Service while Jesse Hale’s maybe-cousin-nephew does his best to make it less of a death trap.

            “It’s not a death trap,” Estere says, and rolls her eyes. “I never would’ve guessed you as a drama queen, Stilinski.”

            “On the bright side,” he says into his beer, “I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to break the speed limit in that thing.”

            “I’m insulted by your lack of faith in me,” she says, and he pretends not to hear it, because he doesn’t want to disrupt his evening at JB’s by wondering if he can preemptively write her a ticket.

            He finds himself at JB’s more and more, some nights with just a water or a coke (which is actually a root beer, but he’s found that Estere calls anything with bubbles and sugar in it a coke) if he’s working an early shift the next day, sometimes with a beer and a couple of the boys from the station. He always ends up sitting at the bar for at least part of the evening, even if the deputies who’ve come in with him grab one of the booths set along the walls. He doesn’t think about the whys too much.

            Jo Beth does. She swings by his customary stool at the bar one night, and nudges his side with a bony elbow. “Eyes off, Grant,” she says. “That one’s trouble, and she knows it, which is almost worse.”

            Estere is bent over the bar’s ancient dishwasher, unloading pint glasses. Her jeans are worn and faded enough that there’s the start of a hole on the inside of the right thigh, frayed denim threads creating stripes over the skin. He hadn’t even realized he was looking, which makes him wonder how long he’s _been_ looking, and if Jo Beth is the only one to have noticed.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, which is wrong. Grant likes Jo Beth, and he tries not to lie to the people he likes.

 

*

 

            Grant doesn’t even know why, but he’s not surprised when he gets a phone call from Estere at nine at night, and he just throws on his pants and goes out the door. He’s driven a few miles before he thinks to wonder about how she’d gotten his phone number – he’s unlisted – and another few after that before he wonders why she called _him_.

            He finds her standing by a payphone at the side of the road, huddled into her jacket. There isn’t much in the way of street lamps this far out, but the moon hangs fat in the sky, and he can see her clearly enough. He draws even with her and parks the car. The sound of his car door opening is too loud in the silence, a sharp little pop that sends something in the bushes scurrying.

            “The jeep broke down?” he asks resignedly as he levers himself out of the car, even though he knows the answer. “I’m trying really hard not to say ‘I-told you so.’”

            “Yes, yes,” she says, and steps forward. “You’re very smart.” He’s not sure quite how, but her hands are suddenly on his chest, pushing him back toward the car, fingers slender and cool through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He shivers and tells himself it’s because of the cold. “Don’t be petty. Petty isn’t a good look on anyone. Let’s go.”

            He reaches up and covers her hands with his own, stopping her attempts to shove him into the car. She pauses and looks at him, considering, and he feels her hands press a little harder against his chest, sees her arms tense beneath the sleeves of her jacket. She’s stronger than he would have thought, even though the tank tops she wears around the bar have left him in very little doubt about her ability to possibly arm wrestle him to the ground. He shifts so that his feet are more firmly planted against the pavement, and ignores the way his breathing has gone a little uneven. “Stop,” he says. “Wait. Where’s the jeep? You can’t just leave it in the middle of the road.”

            “It’s not,” she says impatiently. “Well, it is, but it’s on the road leading up to Jesse’s house. No one will be going that way ‘til morning. I’ll call for a tow first thing. Promise. Can we _go_?”

            She looks strangely intense, large, dark eyes staring him down and heavy brows pulled together like angry slashes across her skin. He relents. “Yeah, good. Fine. Get in the car.”

            “You’re gonna need to let me go first.”

            Grant resolutely does not feel embarrassed as he releases her hands and climbs back into the car. She goes around to the passenger’s side and gets in, her movements stiff and a little awkward, either with cold or with whatever strange urgency is driving her. She only relaxes once he’s put the car in gear and pulled away from the side of the road. He turns on the heat anyway.

            “Out visiting the Hales?” he asks. Jessica Hale doesn’t come into the bar much, but when she does, she spends most of her time occupying his bar stool, her blond head bent forward while she speaks in low tones to Estere. It makes sense that the bar isn’t the only place they see each other, although he hasn’t thought on it much until now.

            “Earlier. Before the jeep broke down on me. That was right before sunset. Took me a while to hike out to the road and find a phone.”

            “Why not just go back to the house? Would’ve saved you a lot of walking, and me the drive out here.” He doesn’t really mind, though. He thinks about telling her so, but her expression is shuttered and he’s not sure she’d hear the words even if he did say them. “We’re not far from the Hale property line as it is; most of these woods belong to them. You had to have been closer, if you were driving the road from their place.”

            “Whose woods these are, I think I know,” she murmurs, and it’s familiar. He goes to ask her what she’s talking about, but she shakes herself and smiles at him. “I didn’t think of it. Dumb, right? It’s probably for the best. Jesse has a family thing tonight, and I really wouldn’t want to disturb them.”

            “But you’re okay with disturbing me?”

            Her smile goes odd and slanted, and he’s once again left with the impression that she’s found a joke to laugh at and isn’t sharing. “Grant,” she says, and chuckles once, low and throaty, “when have I ever _not_ disturbed you?”

            That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough to true that he keeps quiet.

 

*

 

            “Any name,” Grant says, weirdly fascinated in spite of himself.

            Estere shrugs, and holds his glass at an angle under the tap. “It’s a hobby. I mean, if you come up with something really weird, I might have to look it up, but your average Joe? His name is an abbreviation of _Joseph_ , from the Hebrew _Yosef_ , which means ‘He will increase.’”

            “What about your average Jo Beth?” Grant asks, smiling a little.

            She snorts and places his beer in front of him. “Jo is anything but average, but her name is a probably a diminutive form of _Joanna_ , and means ‘God is gracious.’ Beth could come from Elizabeth or Bethany, so you’re going to have to narrow that down for me before I answer.” She shakes her head, and Grant imagines he can almost hear the ponytail holder she’s tortured into pinning back all that dark hair groan in complaint. “No trick questions.”

            “I wasn’t aware it was a trick,” he protests.

            “Hmm, sure.”

            “What does Estere mean?”

            She smiles at him. “Star.” Her elbows knock against the bar as she leans forward. “Stars burn bright, and flare our dramatically. They leave an impression once they’re gone. I think it fits, don’t you?”

            Grant doesn’t answer, because what does a man really say to that? She doesn’t look satisfied by his non-answer, and she disappears out the side door a few minutes later, going to take her smoke break in the alley between the tavern and the dry cleaner’s next door. Sometimes she asks him to keep her company on her breaks, and he’ll spend ten minutes sipping on his beer on the steps that lead up to her apartment, wedged behind the dumpster, watching her blow smoke rings into the darkness; tonight she doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t follow.

            “Names are important,” she says when she comes back, and he thinks he’s heard her say it before. He wants to tell her that they aren’t, that a person’s name doesn’t determine their identity or destiny or whatever, and that she’s crazy for thinking that they do. He doesn’t.

 

*

 

            Two nights later, Jesse brings Alan Deaton into the bar. They go for a table in the corner and settle in, and it’s not long after that when Estere leans across to bar and stabs a finger into Grant’s shoulder.

            He looks at her askance, and resists the urge to rub the place she’d poked. “Yes?”

            “That’s Dr. Deaton, right? He owns the vet’s office out on Madison?”

            Grant knows Deaton in passing. Two summers earlier, there had been a bear out in the woods by the interstate who had lost enough of her wariness around people to need to be put down. She’d figured out how to open the bear boxes on the campground, and she had injured a camper who had been dumb enough to leave food in his tent, and neither of these things were really the animal’s fault but that didn’t change the fact that she had become a threat. Grant had been the one assigned to liaise with the forestry service, and they had brought in Deaton at the request of  Tom Hale, who worked as a ranger.

            Everyone had expected Tom to be the one to track down the bear. He’s widely acknowledged as the best hunter in the county; rumor has it that he once took down a two hundred pound, nine-point buck with nothing more than a hunting knife, which was suicidally stupid but also kind of impressive. Grant had put _money_ on Tom.

            Tom had put money on Deaton.

            After Deaton had led them to the bear and she had been dealt with, Tom had shrugged and counted up his winnings. “Al hunts sometimes,” was the only explanation he had offered, and he had smiled lazily at Deaton before saying, “Don’t you?”

            Deaton’s answering smile had barely been that, as quiet and restrained as the man himself. “Only when I need to,” he had said, and Tom had rolled his eyes, and that had been the end of it.

            “That’s Deaton,” he confirms.

            “Good,” Estere says. “Introduce me.”

            He stares at her for a moment. “Why can’t you ask Jesse to do that?”

            “Because,” Estere says patiently, “if she introduces me, he’ll know this was an ambush.”

            Grant doesn’t really have time to process the idea that she asked Jesse to set up an _ambush_ in order to meet Deaton, or to wonder why she would feel the need to do so, because she’s slithered out from behind the bar and put a hand on the crook of his elbow. Even casual touches from Estere have become increasingly distracting over the past several weeks, so he doesn’t feel he can be blamed for docilely sliding off of the bar stool and allowing her to lead him to the table that Jesse and Deaton have claimed.

            If he’s bothered that she’s putting so much effort into meeting Deaton, who’s handsome and can track down a bear faster than even Tom Hale – well, it doesn’t show. Grant makes sure of that.

            They come to a stop near the table. Jesse looks up and smiles her sharp, toothy smile. “Undersheriff Stilinski. Ms. Barzani. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

            Estere elbows Grant in the side, and he clears his throat. “Just... saying hi?”

            The look that Estere give him says clearly that she despairs of him and his powers of subterfuge both. Deaton looks amused. “Jesse. You could have just said that you wanted me to meet the young lady.” He holds out a hand to Estere. “I’m delighted.”

            “I didn’t know that you would be,” Jesse says, by way of explanation. She reaches out and tugs Estere forward as soon as she and Deaton have shaken hands, into the table’s only open chair.

            “Not all of us are as territorial as you are,” Deaton offers, a comment that Grant can’t even begin to unravel.

            He stands there awkwardly until three sets of eyes, two dark and intent and one a pale and icy blue, turn to look at him. There’s no fourth chair at the table, and they don’t need to say a word for Grant to feel suddenly superfluous and unwelcome. It’s clearer than words. He dips his chin down into a nod and steps away, returns to his place by the bar, and pretends not to notice the way that Jesse Hale’s gaze holds something a lot like sympathy or pity as she watches him cross the room.

 

*

 

            The department rents out JB’s for their annual Christmas party, like they do every year. Grant spends most of the night stone cold sober and peeling his deputies out of places they ought not to be, and Estere spends most of the night laughing her fool head off and feeding those same deputies more drinks. Jo Beth wears a Santa hat and scowls like the angriest little elf that ever was, and Sheriff Dawes, who actually resembles Santa even when he’s at his most serious, is red-cheeked with drink and chortling, with a belly that might, maybe, shake like a bowl full of jelly.

            Family is welcome at the party, so after Grant has kept Delaney from drowning himself in the punch bowl and been blown off by Dawes for trying to talk about some discrepancies he noticed in a case file earlier that day (“This is a _party_ , kid. Try to remember that, I’m beggin’ you.”) he goes to sit in the booth that his father has staked out and claimed as his own.

            Randolph Stilinski had been a deputy with the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s department for forty years, and retired a decade ago when the last round of chemo had failed and turned him into a widower. He’s still as stout and hale as he was the day he had retired at the age of sixty, all burly shoulders and beer gut, and when Grant sits down his father says, “I miss this place. It hasn’t changed much.”

            Once or twice a year, Randolph meets with a few other retired deputies at the tavern, and he comes to the Christmas parties. Otherwise, he doesn’t drink here, just like he doesn’t eat at the diner Grant’s mom had managed right up until she got too sick to go into work, and just like he always looks a little nonplussed when Grant shows up at the house. He fishes and mows his lawn and goes to the grocery store, because Randolph hasn’t stopped living since his wife died, but he’s – he’s cut ties with his old life, as much as possible, and doesn’t seem to mind much that this means cutting ties with his kin too. Sometimes that makes Grant bitter, but mostly it just makes him sad and a little tired. He doesn’t know what it means that his mom was the glue holding the relationship with his father together, or what it says about him as a son that he more-or-less let that glue dissolve once his mom was gone. He’d tried right after she had died, dropped by with food and made sure to get his dad out of the house and down to the sports bar around the corner to watch the game, had even once suggested that he move back home, but his dad doesn’t want the support and Grant can’t figure out how to make him take it, or even if he should bother when his dad seems to be doing just fine alone.

            “I don’t think Jo Beth would complain if you stopped by more often,” Grant says. He tries for levity and mostly misses, but his dad doesn’t seem to notice.

            Instead, Randolph grimaces and tosses back the last of his beer before reaching for his jacket. “I think I’ve had enough for tonight.” He reaches out and claps Grant on the shoulder, quick and rough and a little awkward. “You haven’t had enough. Unbend and have a bit of fun, will you?”

            “Someone has to be sober enough to drive if a call comes in,” Grant says dryly.

            He doesn’t turn to look when the seat dips beside him. He can see Estere just fine out of the corner of his eye, the dark halo of her hair and the reindeer headband that’s sitting slightly askew on the top of her head. She slides three shots onto the cracked Formica tabletop of the booth, and the smell of whiskey is nearly overpowering. “Stilinski,” she says, “I thought we had a policy, wherein you introduce me to any handsome strangers you bring into the bar. I’m hurt, injured to the very core of my soul. And also hungry, but I don’t think that’s because you’ve been less-than-diligent about the introductions. I could be wrong. It could be that hunger is a natural side-effect of injury to the soul.” She looks at Randolph. “What do you think?”

            Grant closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see the fallout. His father prides himself in being a no-nonsense, zero bullshit policy kind of man, and Grand doesn’t have to look to know that, along with being nonsensical, Estere is wearing her brightest bullshit-laden grin.

            When Grant opens his eyes, Randolph is just staring at Estere. He has one arm in his jacket and the other hanging out, and he looks a bit perplexed. That’s to be expected; what surprises Grant is that a moment later his father just tilts back his head and laughs, long and hard. Grant tries to remember the last time he saw Randolph do that and comes up blank.

            “Christ, woman,” Randolph says gruffly. “You could sell water to a duck, couldn’t you?” He holds out a hand across the table. “Randolph Stilinski, since my son has been remiss in the introductions and he doesn’t look quite ready to pick his jaw up off of the table.”

            Estere takes the offered hand, and her face blossoms into a parody of pleasure and genteel shock. Grant is almost sure he doesn’t want to hear what she says next, and he’s proven right almost immediately. “Son? You’re pulling my leg, right? He’s your younger brother, surely.”

            Grant buries his face in his hands, and he honestly can’t say which of them he’s more embarrassed to be associated with when his father just winks broadly and says, “What can I say? The Stilinski men have always aged well.”

            For the next half hour, he watches with a kind of mute horror as Estere does her best to flirt his _seventy-year-old father_ into a blush and very nearly succeeds. The two of them take their shots and, when Grant makes no move to touch the one Estere has pushed in front of him, she drinks that one too.

            “Jo Beth is going to have your hide,” Grant says. He idly wishes that he had caved and taken the shot, because he doesn’t want to have to remember the last several minutes of his life come morning.

            “Nah,” Estere says. “Jo Beth is overwhelmed by the spirit of the season. She doesn’t mind. Look, see?”

            She gestures at Jo Beth. Jo Beth is standing behind the bar, her hands on her hips and black and dire hatred in her eyes as she surveys the room. Grant looks at Estere.

            “That’s Jo Beth’s happy face. Confusingly enough, it’s the same as her mad face, her sad face, and her I-smell-something face.”

            She’s... not actually wrong.

            When Randolph finally shrugs the rest of the way into his jacket and stands to leave, he’s actually humming faintly under his breath. Grant doesn’t know what his life has become, he truly doesn’t, although he has a fair idea of who he should blame.

            At the end of the night, Estere helps him herd the deputies (and the Sheriff) out the door, into cabs and the cars of their more sober family members. Jo Beth has a bowl behind the bar with the keys to half of the town’s patrol cars in it, which is probably borderline illegal but also better than letting any of Beacon Hills’ finest drive after a night like this one.

            Estere is more-or-less shoving Delany and the other two remaining deputies through the exit when Delaney smiles sloppily and slurs, “Look, Barzani. Mistletoe!” Grant readies himself to step in if Delaney goes in for the kiss, because Estere can handle herself but he has the feeling that ‘handle’ might mean ‘punch in the balls’ when it comes to her dealings with Delaney. Instead, Delaney gives her a push to the shoulder that turns her in Grant’s direction and sends Delaney sprawling into the doorframe.

            All three of the deputies are watching them now, with the fuzzy fascination of the truly inebriated. Estere smiles, and puts a hand on Grant’s shoulder before going up on her toes and leaning in. She’s very close, close enough that he can smell the faint traces of whiskey and cigarettes on her mouth, and the softer, faintly floral smell of whatever it is she uses to wash her hair. For a moment he can feel the hot puff of her breath against his lips, but then she turns her face and brushes a light kiss over the stubble on his cheek.

            She lingers there briefly, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to tilt his head and catch her mouth with his own. He could slide a hand into the tousled mass of her hair, feel it heavy against the back of his hand and tangle his fingers there, maybe knock that stupid reindeer headband right off. She’s noisy as rule, always talking and laughing, and he wonders if he could kiss her quiet, or if she’d be loud during that too, if she’d moan into his mouth if he kissed her long enough or murmur quiet demands against his lips. He surprises himself with how much he _wants_ to do all of that, and the realization keeps him stock still and frozen until she takes her hand from his shoulder and her lips from his cheek and steps away.

            “You boys get home safe,” she says.

            Shit.

 

*

 

            On New Year’s Eve, Grant’s apartment is broken into. He returns home in the morning after working the night shift (they always need people on duty for New Year’s; it’s a busy night and no one wants to work it because Sheriff Dawes’ wife throws the biggest party in town, and Grant doesn’t mind missing the party or getting the time and a half pay) and finds the lock broken and the door open. Grant doesn’t go inside until after he’s radioed for backup, because working in a middle-of-nowhere town doesn’t mean he hasn’t put his fair share of bad men away and he’s not _stupid_. Two deputies show up, hungover but attentive, and they go in together. The apartment is empty, but it’s also been tossed, Grant’s belongings scattered across the floor with reckless abandon. Nothing looks to have been taken, but his dishes are in shards on the kitchen floor and the cushions on his couch have been shredded. There’s no point to it that Grant can see, none, unless the point was to systematically destroy his home, and since there have been no other similar break-ins recently – well, it all seems a little focused, something that the rest of the department is quick to catch on to.

            “Seems like someone’s not too happy with you,” Dawes says, when Grant comes into his office later that day. “For all we know, it’s just some kid pissed that you hit him with a speeding ticket, but I don’t want you going out on the job alone until we figure this out, and I need you to go through your old cases and earmark anyone who might be holding a grudge.” He looks tired, the lines around his mouth and eyes more pronounced than they usually are. “Do you have someplace to stay? Alicia would be happy to make up the guestroom.”

            “I’ll figure something out,” Grant says. He’s working on no sleep, after a long night of wrangling drunks and drunk drivers convinced that driving down the yellow line is a perfectly valid method of transportation, and he’s too exhausted to feel worried or angry or any of the other things he’s sure he should be feeling. He’s beyond numb, the adrenaline rush that has carried him through the morning long gone, and all he wants to do once Dawes lets him go is find a bed and crawl into it. Instead, he goes to JB’s, where the last of the lunch rush is starting to trickle out. He doesn’t even have the energy to pretend it’s for any reason other than to see Estere, and he sure has hell doesn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed by how pathetic his little infatuation is starting to look.

            Yeah. Infatuation. He’s man enough to admit to, especially since there’s really no other excuse for seeking out a woman when his eyes feel gritty with lack of sleep and the edges of his thoughts have the distant, golden-hazy glow of fatigue coloring them.

            Jo Beth takes one look at him and steers him onto one of the few empty barstools. She puts a cup of coffee in front of him. Grant approves, because he’s almost sure that a beer would result in him sleeping in his car instead of in a bed. It actually takes him a few moments of staring blankly at his coffee to realize that the person sharing bar space with Jo Beth is not Estere, but a lean, handsome man that Grant recognizes vaguely as one of the Hales. He can’t come up with a name, mostly because the man is one of those rare Hales who doesn’t have an arrest record.

            “She still sleeping off last night?” he asks Jo Beth, too tired even for pretense.

            “She’s gone,” Jo Beth says, and Grant feels a little curl of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. Something of that must make its way onto his face, because Jo Beth’s mouth pulls down into a sour little line. “Out of town for a few days with Deaton.” That doesn’t actually help much with the feeling in his stomach, and it’s a relief when Jo Beth takes pity on him and adds grudgingly, “Some friend of his has a contract job up the coast and needed people, so Deaton took her up to introduce her. They money’s good, I guess, and usually I wouldn’t be too happy with the short notice, but she found me someone to fill in while she’s gone. Should only be a couple of days.”

            Grant grunts, and Jo Beth excuses herself, which is to say she rolls her eyes at him and stalks off to make someone else feel like an idiot. He downs his coffee even though it burns his tongue and just sits there for a while. The nameless Hale eventually comes by and refills Grant’s coffee, and Grant must stare a little because he receives an upraised eyebrow and a smirk, followed by the words, “Let me guess. You’re wondering what a guy like me is doing in a place like this?”

            Grant laughs a little helplessly, and it’s as good a question as any, so he nods. “Sure. I was thinking of following that up with, ‘do you come here often?’”

            “Watch it,” Hale says, “or people will start to gossip about you seeing other bartenders.” He shrugs, and answers his own question before Grant can do more than distantly ponder the fact that he’s apparently obvious enough to be gossiped about. “I tended bar a bit in college, and my sister likes to help her friends out. When Estere said she needed a stand in for a couple of days, I got drafted. I’m not sure I knew what I was getting into. Just last night one of your deputies was complaining that I don’t make Midori Sours even _close_ to as good as the ones made by the regular bartender. I was a little insulted. My Midori Sour is _flawless._ ”

            “Delaney,” Grant mutters. He remembers a time when none of the deputies has swallowed anything but beer and whiskey. Those days are past, because Estere is a bad influence, and she has the hardened law enforcement professionals of Beacon Hills drinking Lemon Drops and Sidecars. Delaney likes her Midori Sours, and Grant wonders in passing why Delaney had been here last night instead of at the party. Pregaming, maybe, except that Delaney is way too cheap a bastard to pregame at a bar, and marginally too smart to pregame before the boss’ party. People _drink_ when the Sheriff has a house party, sure, because no one wants to insult Alicia Dawes’ hospitality by turning down a glass of champagne, but by the same token, no one wants to get messily drunk all over Alicia Dawes’ spotless rugs.

            Ah, well. Not his concern.

            He drinks his second cup of coffee, and by the time he’s done with it he’s a little jittery but still almost dozing on the bar. He’s had too many years of cop shop coffee for the caffeine to affect him much, and the second time Jo Beth catches him nodding she pokes him hard in the ribs with one bony finger to wake him up and orders Hale to call him a cab. Grant protests over the finger but not the cab, and even lets Hale help him off the barstool and walk him outside.

            The cool air revives him a little, enough that he can say, “The secret is the sour mix,” around a jaw-popping yawn.

            “What?”

            “The sour mix. She makes her own. Keeps it in a bottle labeled ‘arsenic and cat piss’ so that the bartender Jo Beth has in on Tuesday and Thursday days doesn’t use it. Same with the rest of the mixers. Anything labeled ‘cyanide and bile’ or ‘horseradish juice’ or ‘the tears of bitter exes’ is good to use. Probably. Good luck figuring out what they actually are, though.” He closes his eyes and grimly contemplates the possibility of napping on his feet until the taxi comes.

            “I think I can manage. I have a good sense of smell. Thanks for the tip.” He can hear the smile in Hale’s voice. “Your girl has a nasty sense of humor. No wonder Jesse likes her. My sister always did appreciate a woman who wouldn’t just roll over and show her belly, so to speak.”

            “Not m’girl,” Grant says. It seems, at that moment, like an important point to make.

            “Hmm. So you won’t mind if I have a go at her?” When Grant opens his eyes and scowls reflexively at Hale’s stupidly handsome face, Hale just laughs again. “Yeah, that’s about what I figured.”

            “I’m thinking of formulating a ten year plan to make her love me,” is the next thing to pop out of Grant’s mouth, and Christ, he needs to not talk when he’s this wrecked. His cheeks feel hot, and he closes his eyes again rather than be forced to maintain eye contact. He opens them a moment later, resigned to the fact that he’ll have to face Hale’s reaction when the cab comes if he doesn’t do so now.

            He’s immensely gratified when Hale just grins and says, “Do it. If you convince her to settle down and pop out ridiculously adorable babies with you, I won’t get bullied into covering any more bar shifts. It’s a win/win for both of us.” There’s something a little patronizing about the slant of Hale’s smile, but that’s still better than laughter or pity, so Grant’s willing to let it go.

            The taxi arrives, and Grant is inside and on his way to his dad’s house before he realizes that he never did ask Hale’s name.

            A decade later, when the Hale house is set on fire and Grant is standing in the burn ward at Beacon Hills Hospital with a couple of scared teenagers and a possible arson investigation on his hands, he’ll regret not having learned the name sooner. He’ll want to go home and crawl into bed with his wife, tell her that the man he had once given the secret to her sour mix is named Peter Hale, even though she probably knew that and knew it years before he did.

            He won’t, because by then the time for telling his wife anything will be long over. He’ll make it home an hour before dawn and check on his son, and then he’ll fall asleep at the kitchen table with witness statements spread out beneath his head and a whiskey glass by his elbow. He’ll have drooled a bit in his sleep, and Peter’s name will be nothing but a black smudge of ink on the page.


	2. Courtship

            Grant is at his apartment trying to sort through what’s left of his belongings a few days after the break-in. He’s tossing the broken pieces of the dinner platter his mom had given him when he’d moved out into the trash bin when someone shoves the door in hard enough that it bounces off the opposite wall. He straightens up from where he has been crouched over the bin, hand resting on his service weapon, but it’s only Estere, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. The sunlight outside limes her dark hair with pale yellow and glints against the edges of her red leather jacket. She’s staring quizzically at the broken lock on the door, and the yellow police tape that had been stretched across the doorframe dangles forlornly behind her. “Security here stinks, Stilinski,” she says, by way of greeting.

            “This is a crime scene, you know,” he replies. There’s not much force behind it, because the crime techs have already gotten everything they’re going to get and Dawes had cleared Grant this morning to come in and pack whatever he can salvage. He’s also ridiculously, embarrassingly glad to see her, which probably robs his voice of what little conviction he might have mustered.

            She waves him off. “No, no, I mean it. Who the hell put this weenie little lock on your door? I think I want to talk to the management, because I could pick this in my _sleep_. I mean, if someone’s foot hadn’t beaten me to it.”

            “Yeah,” Grant mutters, “what’s a little B&E between friends? I don’t ever want to look at your record, do I?”

            “You mean you haven’t already?” Estere asks, and she grins at him. “You wouldn’t find much, anyway. Just a few tiny misdemeanors. A girl needs to get caught before she has an arrest record.”

            Grant closes his eyes. “I’m not hearing this.”

            “I think we’re both happier that way,” Estere agrees. She leans a hip against the doorframe. “You’re going to need to move. Somewhere with better locks.”

            He shrugs, even though he’s been thinking the same thing since the break-in. This was the first apartment he’d lived in after signing up as a deputy at the department, when the wage he was making wouldn’t cover anything better, and he’s lived here since. Undersheriff makes a hell of a lot more than deputy, but moving just seemed like too much effort when he’s almost never home and rarely has people over. “If you’re sticking around, you should lend a hand.”

            She purses her lips like she might refuse, but after a moment she nods. “Let me just tell Alan he can go. It’s been a rough week, and he’s all tuckered out. It was mean of me to force him to detour over here to begin with; I’m not gonna make him wait on me.”

            Which means that she came here straight away after getting back into town. He wants to know why. He wants to know how she even found out about the break-in, although that question might be a little simpler than the first: Estere’s skill with a cocktail shaker has won her a small legion of loyal informants down at the station. He doesn’t ask either question. “You let him drive?” he asks instead.

            Estere makes a faint, wounded noise. “He doesn’t like Delilah, either.”

            It takes Grant a few seconds to figure out what she’s talking about. “You named your jeep Delilah.”

            “She’s pretty enough to make a strong man weak in the knees.”

            “Estere, your jeep is the ugliest thing on four wheels that I’ve seen in my life.”

            She narrows her eyes at him dangerously. “You bite your tongue,” she says, before turning on her heel and practically storming out the door. He half expects her not to come back, but she returns a few minutes later. She shrugs out of her jacket, and Grant can’t quite help the faint noise that escapes him.

            “What?” Estere stares at him for a moment, then follows his gaze to the bruises dotting her arms like deep purple fingerprints. She chuckles. “What, these? Word to the wise: when any cousin of Alan’s says that she has a rough job to do and needs some help, you’ll be earning every penny. I think poor Alan is _concussed_.” She tilts her head. “Probably shouldn’t have let him drive, come to think of it.”

            “I thought Jo Beth said it was a friend of his,” Grant says, because he hasn’t gotten to be second in the department’s pecking order by missing details.

            A minute pause. “Friend, cousin. What’s the difference?”

            He lets it go. “What kind of job requires a veterinarian and a bartender?”

            She crouches on the kitchen floor and grabs a more-or-less intact mug before smiling up at him. “The rough kind.”

            Grant shakes his head and leans over to help her. “Whereabouts were you?”

            “Up Siskiyou County, near Yreka.”

            “Huh.”

            “What?”

            “Nothing,” Grant says, because it really is nothing. “There was something about Yreka at the station a couple days ago. I guess they’ve had a few murders recently. Real ugly stuff.”

            Her hand stills against a shard of plate, fingers glancing over the broken edge. “It’s a good sized town,” she says. “I’m sure ugly things happen all the time. I didn’t hear anything about it while I was up there.” She looks at him through her lashes, another smile playing across her lips. “Makes me glad to have taken along a big, strong man on my trip.”

            Grant wonders if she knows, and if she’s just playing with him. She’s never struck him as mean-spirited – at least not like that – so he’s inclined to think no, even though everyone else they know seems to have spotted it even before he did. It seems fair that he would fall for a woman who can’t sniff out the fact that he’s more than a little stupid for her, since he’s being such a coward about actually _saying_ anything to her; it’s like the universe is judging him for flinching. There’s no reason to it, because Grant has never been a coward with a woman before, has never been so scared of rejection that he can’t work up the courage to suggest going to a movie or grabbing dinner. Part of the problem is that, even given the amount of time they spend together, he’s yet to master the art of reading Estere, except for the feeling that whatever it is that keeps her from heading for the borders of town is tenuous at best. He doesn’t want to be the one who spooks her, and not only because he has the vague feeling that Jesse Hale might come after him with a shotgun if he ever does.

            “You should get a house,” Estere says, disturbing his train of thought and making him aware that he’s been silent too long. “If you get a house, you can put your own damn locks on, and the doors might not be made of _cardboard_.”

 

*

 

            When Estere had first mentioned him buying a house, Grant had assumed that the idea was just as terrible as it sounded. He isn’t sure what he’d do with a house, and he knows he can’t afford one.

            It turns out that he can.

            Beacon Hills is one of the towns that the interstate left behind – missed them by a mile, literally. Before that, it had been a railway hub, and well on its way to being on the map. Then the roads had spread out over California like embracing limbs that weren’t particularly interested in cuddling up to this part of the state, the railway had become a thing of the past, and the town with it. There are still a good number of people in Beacon Hills, enough that they haven’t faded away like a lot of towns that had slipped through the cracks of the developing nation, but for the most part they’re people whose families have been here for generations; not a lot of people leave Beacon Hills, and even fewer come in. As a result, real estate in Beacon Hills is, if not dirt cheap, then close enough.

            When the lady at the real estate office tells him, in the fervent voice of a broker who hasn’t sold a property in far too long, that she can make it almost as cost effective for him to own as it is for him to rent, he caves and agrees to look at a few houses.

            He still doesn’t expect to buy.

            One night at the bar, he makes the mistake of admitting that he has an appointment with the realtor the next day. He’s only a little surprised when Estere shows up to the meeting, and is easily placated by the Styrofoam cup of coffee that she offers him.

            He’s feeling significantly less serene about his decision to let her tag along a few hours later, after she’s managed to find flaws in ever single property he’s looked at. The realtor looks inches away from tears, and Grant is speculating about whether or not pulling out his own hair would actually accomplish anything.

            “Too boxy,” she says at the split-level ranch that the realtor shows them first, and “bad wiring,” at the next. “Just plain ugly,” she says at house number six. So far, seven has escaped unscathed, but Grant is waiting for her to open her mouth. There’s plenty to critique, from the peeling paint that has gone some indeterminate shade of gray but which Grant darkly suspects was once orange, to the dirt on the windows and the pieces of gingerbread molding that have broken away.

            “Estere?” he prompts, when she remains silent.

            She shrugs and takes a sip on the long cold dregs of her own cup of coffee. “I like it.”

            Grant waits for the punch line. None is forthcoming.

            “Can we see the inside?” she asks the realtor.

            The interior of the house is nicer than the exterior, just as covered in grime as the windows but in better repair. The wood of the floors glows pale gold in the late afternoon light, and there’s a brick fireplace downstairs. The house is bigger than it appeared from the outside, long rather than wide, a rabbit’s warren of rooms looking into rooms like the reflections in mirrors hung opposite of each other. Estere is smiling as she takes it all in.

            “Really?” Grant asks.

            She shrugs again. “Foundations and frame look good at a glance. That’s all you really need. If something has good bones, the rest is – manageable. A coat of fresh paint, a few throw rugs. Better locks.”

            “Your wife has a point,” the realtor says, and Grant can’t really blame her for the assumption, since it’s essentially been clear from the first that he’ll be buying the house but Estere will be picking it out. He shouldn’t feel as okay with that as he is. He thinks it’s less about the torch he’s carrying and more about a certain level of trust, and something about the way she keeps harping on about locks. Like she’s worried. About _him_.

            Estere smiles like a shark scenting blood in the water and places her hand on his arm. “Oh, yes. Me and the mister are just dying to settle down and start us up a family, fire out a few bouncing balls of snot, but... well, it’s hard for a couple buying their first home, you know?” The smile widens a notch. “Let’s talk about price.”

            The realtor looks nervous. Grant takes that as a sign of her intelligence.

            He ends up getting the house at a significant discount.

 

*

 

            The Sheriff’s desk is solid wood, broad and imposing, kept clear of files and paperwork so that the people who come to the station to meet with him don’t accidentally catch sight of anything that has to do with an open investigation or department personnel. The Undersheriff’s desk, on the other hand, is cheap metal piled wrist deep in paperwork at all times, and sometimes Grant considers putting a phonebook on his chair just so that he can see anyone who comes to see _him_ past all of those manila folders.

            Perhaps that’s why it takes Grant a few weeks to remember the discrepancy in one of the case files that he had first noticed a few days before Christmas, that and a string of small potatoes robberies on 7-11s in the area ( _specifically_ 7-11s, which is why Grant had suggested that they look at disgruntled employees), which have occupied the better part of the department for the better part of the last couple weeks.

            The discrepancy is a weird one, not in the least because he found it in the file on one of _his_ cases. Then again, if it hadn’t been one of his, he might not have noticed it in the first place. It’s such a small thing. In early December, they had busted a woman who was running credit card scams, taking out cards in someone else’s name and then maxing them out in cash advances. She had been arrested, the FTC had been notified, and Grant had checked the cash they had found into evidence, along with everything else having to do with the case.

            Not coincidentally, inventories for the evidence locker, like every other piece of remotely important or not important paperwork to circulate through the station, end up on his desk. He usually gives them a cursory glance at best, but this time he’d noticed something. A number and a case number. A quick glance at the report he’d filed after the case was closed had confirmed that he was right, and that less money had been inventoried by evidence than he remembered checking in.

            Such a little thing.

            Probably nothing.

            Better to look into it, just in case it’s _something_.

             

 

*

 

            Grant isn’t in escrow on the house for long, a fact which he chalks up primarily to Estere’s ability to scare the piss out of innocent real estate brokers.

            Delaney and a couple of other deputies help him move his few remaining belongings. There isn’t much to move, since the furniture store in town won’t be delivering his new couch and bed for a few days, so them being there is mostly an excuse to crack jokes and drink the beer that his dad drops by with just after noon. They leave once the beer is gone, and Jo Beth comes over with a three bean casserole and a stern expression, but doesn’t stay. Alicia Dawes drops by just as Jo Beth is leaving, bearing pie (Jo Beth sniffs disdainfully before climbing into her car) and a bottle of red wine. Alicia chats idly with him for a while and makes vague (threatening) noises about coming by with a few of the ladies from her bridge group to clean if he doesn’t get to it first, before she also goes. The sun is setting and Grant has just settled down with a paper plate full of casserole and the last beer he had hidden away in the vegetable crisper when Estere’s jeep pulls up to the curb in front of his house.

            He watches as Estere climbs out of the jeep, then as she shoves the seat forward and clambers behind it into the back. He can't see what she's doing in there past the glare the fading sun casts on the windows. She emerges a moment later with what looks to be a good-sized branch in hand, some of its leaves bent and torn from what must've been a rough trip over (he's seen how she drives). Dense clusters of tiny, round, brilliant red berries drip heavily from between the leaves, and when Grant sees the damp burlap wrapped around the thickest part of the branch, he realizes it's not a branch at all. It's a sapling, green-tipped brown roots peeking out from under the protective covering of the cloth. Estere's index and middle fingers are hooked beneath the twine holding the burlap in place, and she swings the plant carelessly as she saunters up the front walk toward him.

  
            She drops the sapling at his feet with all the smug self-satisfaction of a well-groomed house cat depositing the bloody and mangled body of a mouse. "Brought you something. Think of it as a housewarming gift."

            Grant stares at it a little blankly. "You brought me a tree."

            Her smirk widens a notch. "I did."

            He considers asking her if its poisonous. It looks poisonous. It's probably poisonous. Estere would definitely think it entertaining to bring him poisonous flora. Fauna too, if she ever got it into her head that he needed a pet. "What is it?" he asks, since that seems more diplomatic than asking her where it falls on the toxicity scale.

            "Rowan," she says. When he shifts his stare from the tree to her, she tugs absently on the end a curl and refuses to meet his gaze. “You’ve got a nice, big yard here, but it’s a little barren. I thought it could use some livening up.”

            Grant considers the way she’s avoiding looking at him, reads it as guilt, and caves. “How likely is it to poison the neighborhood cats or possibly the ground water?”

            “Huh?” She glances at him, then returns to the piece of hair between her fingers. She examines it closely, like she’s checking for split ends or possibly the secrets to the known universe. “Jeez, Stilinski. Teach a girl to buy you presents. It’s not going to bring property values in the neighborhood down by contaminating the water supply, don’t worry. Actually, if you cook the berries just right, they make a pretty decent jam.” Grant tries to imagine Estere making jam like his mother used to do. When the mental picture he’s forming almost immediately turns to blaring sirens and fire and men in BHFD uniforms, he stops trying to imagine it. “You can find rowan all over the place, here and in Europe. Sometimes it’s called Quickbeam, or Delight-of-the-Eye. Or Mountain Ash.”

            Estere pauses, scuffs her boot against the ground, and Grant can’t help but notice that she’s not wrong about the yard. The grass is as much brown as green, patchy in places and sparse everywhere, like the last straggling fringe of hair atop an aging bachelor’s head, dirt peeking through like sad little glimpses of scalp. “Is it good enough, then?” Estere asks, as the silence stretches toward uncomfortable. She’s frowning a little, like asking the question bothers her (or maybe what bothers her is the question itself, or hell, maybe his _face_ – he still has a hard time reading her). She shakes herself, and her expression clears. “I mean, d’you think the Home Owners’ Association will let you keep it?” She casts a deeply mistrustful glance up and down the block. “I assume your neighborhood has one. Neighborhoods like this always do.”

            There actually isn’t a Home Owners’ Association. The neighborhood is nice, but older, and the people here are more interested in getting the kids to soccer practice and enjoying their golden years than they are in telling him what color he can paint his shutters. He doesn’t bother to tell Estere this, because she can be remarkably difficult to dissuade once she has an idea in that head of hers, and he isn’t sure he wants to sit through a long and possibly crazy-eyed discussion on whether or not there’s a _secret_ Home Owners’ Association, or speculation about Mrs. Pearson next door being a member of the Illuminati.

            (He thinks she does it just to watch him twitch; her eyes might be crazy, but her smile is always a little baiting, like she’s waiting for him to finally call her on the massive pile of bullshit she’s attempting to weave into gold. He never does. Talking to her is more fun, even if it does involve listening to her spin a tale about his octogenarian neighbor being part of some kind of clandestine organization.)

            He doesn’t say any of that, though. He’s still caught up on the tree, and it’s such a strange gift and not one he would have asked for, but she’d been quieter than usual when she’d asked _is it good enough?_ and he thinks that means that she actually, maybe _cares_ about how well her gift is received. “It’s good,” he says, even though it’s a _tree_ and he has no idea what he’s going to do with a tree. Plant it, he supposes, although he expects it’ll be dead within the week. Grant has terrible luck with houseplants, and trees are bigger. “It’s fine. I like it. The,” nonexistent, “Home Owner’s Association will just have toe deal.”

            Estere smiles at him, and her shoulders relax almost imperceptibly. “They’d better.”

            “Or you’ll slash their tires,” Grant says, “and then not tell me about it, like a good friend who doesn’t want to force me to arrest her.”

            She waves a dismissive hand at him. “Now, now. I would never be that uncreative and, as you so correctly pointed out, slashing someone’s tires is illegal.” Her voice is serene. Grant knows enough to recognize that when Estere sounds relaxed and content, it’s simply the calm before the storm, so he waits. “I’d just convince you to paint your house chartreuse and hang mismatched curtains on all the windows, then watch as their heads explode. It’s perfect. No judge would be able to convict me.”

            “Truly a dastardly plan.”

            The smile turns a little wicked. “That’s not very nice, Stilinski. My parents were married.”

            A startled laugh slides over Grant’s tongue, and he shakes his head at her. “Christ. Jo Beth was right. You do have a mouth on you.”

            She leans in a little, until she can wink broadly into his face. “Think of my mouth often, do you?”

            It’s—it’s his fault, really. Her tone is light, joking, and there’s no cause for him to drop off into silence so thick that he can practically feel it in his lungs, nor for his gaze to veer instantly toward the taunting curve of her lips. He says nothing, but he’s pretty sure she can feel the tension in the air, because her smile fades and her eyes catch and hold his. She’s close, close enough that there’s no pretending that the tension – the potential – isn’t there. There’s no ignoring how he’s looking at her, and for a moment, just a moment, he thinks that she’s finally looking back.

            “Maybe I do,” he says, and he doesn’t intend for the words to sound like a challenge, but they do, and intentions be damned.

            Estere pulls away, steps back until there’s a good foot or two of space between them. There’s a careful blankness to her face, dark eyes remote in a way that makes it impossible for him to fathom whatever lies beyond them. She’s very still, and very quiet, and he’s about to fumble his way through an apology when she finally speaks.

            “You don’t want me, Grant,” she says, and she’s smoothed away the rough edges in her voice, made herself as gentle as Estere is capable of being. “I’ve got wheels on me,” she waves a hand toward the bulk of the house behind him, “and you’re putting down roots. Let it be.”

            She wiggles her fingers at him by way of farewell, but it’s hard to interpret the way that she turns and trots toward her jeep without giving him a chance to respond as anything other than running away.

 

*

 

            For a few days after, Grant visits JB’s only while in the company of others. He stops haunting the stool at the end of the bar, never suggests a visit even though he’ll go if one of the deputies suggests it first. He’s not avoiding Estere, per se, but he feels like he needs the space. Somehow he’s gotten all tangled up in her, bound up tight by that mess of brown-black hair and sharp tongue, and if that’s not what she wants – if she never meant to bind him – then he has to find a way to extricate himself before he wrecks what they _do_ have. He needs distance, perspective, and those are things he can’t get by living in her pocket.

            In retrospect, he should have realized that Estere doesn’t actually do _patience_ very well, and planned accordingly.

            She lets him be the first four days, the glances she sends his way slowly transfiguring from wary to concerned to irritated. On day five, she slides out from behind the bar with two glasses of scotch in her hands and an intimidatingly blank face, and just kind of stares at Doris Addams, the department’s newest dispatcher and the only other current occupant of Grant’s booth, until the poor girl chooses the better part of valor, claims that she’ll be joining the deputies who came with them for a cigarette (Addams doesn’t smoke), and beats a hasty retreat. Estere takes her place, worn jeans whispering softly against the vinyl of the seat. She slides one of the shots in front of Grant, and he can’t help but consider it with deep misgiving, because no conversation that Estere thinks he’ll need a drink to get through will end well. He knows this.

            She opens her mouth, and then seems to think the better of whatever she was about to say, because her jaw snaps shut hard enough that he can hear the click of her teeth. When she does speak, she sounds both gruff and a touch uncertain, like she’s nervous and trying to hide it behind her usual bravado. “Are we okay?”

            There are so many things he could say. He could tell her that he needs his space, and he probably should. Seeing her uncertain shouldn’t be enough to undercut his conviction that he has to find some kind of balance between being her friend and being a little bit in love with her that isn’t going to do him damage in the long run. There’s a little frown line between her brows, though, and tension in her shoulders, and God help him, but he can’t keep from being touched that she’s actually worried that they _aren’t_ okay, and wanting to soothe that worry accordingly.

            And—she drives him crazy, in so many ways that have nothing to do with pining over her and everything to do with the fact that Estere Barzani is essentially a hurricane barely grounded by a thin veneer of human skin and bone, but she’s also been a good friend to him, and Grant doesn’t like to let his friends down. He can’t help but feel that maybe he won’t be as good a friend to her as she’s been to him if he can’t give her this, like he’s withholding his friendship because she held out on making it anything other than friendship.

            He’d been afraid that she’d run if he made his feelings plain. She hasn’t, and that has to count for something. Doesn’t it?

            He reaches across the table and pats her hand, a little awkwardly. “We’re fine. It’s just been busy at work. Sorry.”

            She watches him carefully for a long enough moment that he’s pretty sure she doesn’t believe him, but maybe he’s wrong or maybe she’s decided to pretend belief, because she turns her hand under his until it’s palm up and she can give his fingers a brief squeeze. Her smile is brilliant, and his heart thunders against his chest in a way he’s really going to have to work at fixing. “Don’t work yourself into the ground, Stilinski,” she says, and releases his hand. She downs her shot before sliding out of the booth. “Relax some. I have a hard time believing that crime in Beacon Hills is at such an all-time high that you can’t even do that.”

            Over the next few days, he makes sure to come into JB’s even if he’s not in the company of others. He claims his usual barstool and goes out with Estere on her smoke breaks. He sits on the steps that lead up to her apartment and watches as the smoke she blows out through her lips catches the dim glow of the light above the side door, turns itself into a hazy golden veil over her eyes before dissipating, and he wonders vaguely if he’ll ever not want to see the way her mouth moves or the dark flash of her eyes. He listens to her ramble about how the idiot daytime bartender never wipes down the counter, or translate the names of the people they know ( _Alan_ means “little rock,” he now knows, and _Jessica_ is the anglicized version of _Iscah_ , first made popular by Shakespeare), and wonders if he’ll ever get tired of hearing her talk.

            There are worse things, he thinks, than to just keep on being in love with Estere, even if she doesn’t return it. _Worse_ would be to not have these moments, the air smelling faintly of winter and dumpster and cigarette smoke, the quiet sounds of Beacon Hills by night blending with the low, rough descant of her voice. That would be worse.

            It turns out to be for the best that they’ve put most of the awkwardness behind them a week later, when Grant sits down behind his desk and sees evidence that that someone’s been tampering with the lock on the bottom left drawer.

            It’s subtle. If he didn’t spend a lot of long, boring hours behind this desk, he wouldn’t even notice: the kill-me-now gray paint around the lock has a few new, long gouges in it, and the metal at the edge of the keyhole is slightly bent, like someone put a little too much pressure on it and the metal gave before whatever was pushed inside the lock had. The lock sticks in a way it never has before when he unlocks it and slides the drawer open.

            There’s nothing missing, but at the top of his stack of open cases are the files he’s pulled in relation to the money missing from evidence, reams of paper dedicated to inventory of the evidence room and sleek manila folders holding the files for cases his own and not, carefully culled from the filing cabinets over the last three weeks. He’s found two more discrepancies in that time, some jewelry that a couple of kids had ripped off from a pawn shop and more cash that are present in the case files but not in the inventory. Now, with it clear as day that someone has been tampering with his desk drawer, he’s forced to consider a possibility he’s so far tried to ignore.

            He’d mentioned the missing money from evidence to Sheriff Dawes at the department’s Christmas party, before he’d realized what it meant and within hearing distance of half of the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department. The break-in at his place could have been anyone, someone he’d made enemies with on a case or just teenagers trying to prove something, but access to his office is limited; the front desk wouldn’t have let anyone in while he was out. Whoever tries to break into his desk had already been in the building.

            It means – it seems to mean – that whoever broke into his apartment was from the department, and that what they were looking for were these files. It might not mean that; enough years of police work have taught him that coincidences _do_ sometimes happen, but the timing is too perfect. The timing, the files, break-ins or attempted break-ins at both his home and office – it’s all far, far too perfect. He wishes that it wasn’t.

            At the end of the day, he takes the assorted bits of information he’s put together on the things that have gone missing from the evidence locker with him. After that, he’s not sure what to do with them. He could take the files home, but some of the deputies helped him move. Where he lives is an open secret within the department. His dad’s house is also an option, but that seems like a bad idea for a number of reasons, including his discomfort at the idea of spending long hours looking over what he’s gathered under his father’s watchful eye, and the fact that if _he_ were looking for something squirreled away by a suspect, the family is the first place he’d check, and if he is dealing with someone from within the department, they’re going to have the same instincts he does.

            He’s takes the files to Estere’s apartment instead.

            He’s never been further up the narrow staircase leading to her apartment than the first few steps, and the weather-worn wooden boards creak beneath his feet. The shallow landing at the top of the stairs is lined with terracotta pots and cheap tin planters, which strikes him as strange; in spite of the tree she had gifted him with, Estere has never struck his as the sort to spend her weekends quietly gardening. He doesn’t recognize most of the plants, although that’s rosemary in the corner and mint perched precariously on the edge of the railing. It’s an abundance of green, with only a few of the plants bearing flowers, and that might be the season – even in California, there are few things that bloom year round – but this looks more like his mother’s kitchen garden, with few plants _intended_ to flower. One plant near the head of the staircase has a few thick spears of greenery that stab up into the air, buds just starting to bloom a vibrant periwinkle blue that’s visible even in the gathering twilight and the overhang of the roof, and he’s reaching out to touch it when the door swings open.

            “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Estere says, her voice low and amused. “Unlike the rowan I brought you, aconite is definitely poisonous. Mostly if you eat it, which I hope you weren’t planning on doing, but it can be absorbed through the skin.”

            He stops, his fingers hovering an inch from the unexpectedly dangerous plant. “I’m wondering if it’s legal for you to be growing, in that case.”

            “I think we both know by now that you’re not going to write me up for it, _Undersheriff_. Besides, I don’t get a lot of guests up here, and Alan and Jesse both know better than to go fondling my garden. There are health risks, you know? That’s belladonna over there, and foxglove near the door. Both are toxic.” She considers a moment and says, “The mugwort, to your left, that’s safe to touch, unless you’ve got pollen allergies.”

            Grant smiles, because Estere having an apartment garden full of plants that will kill a man makes a lot more sense than her just having a garden. He turns to face her. She’s leaning against the doorframe, the curves and angles of her body outlined against the light pouring out from within the apartment. Her face is shadowed, but he can still make out the sharp, questioning arch of one of her brows. He waits for the inquiry that goes with that expression – what is he doing here, why is he visiting her? – but it never comes. She just nods once and steps aside. “You’d best come in, then.”

 

*

 

            For the next two weeks, Grant spends most evenings at Estere’s apartment. It’s all warm colors and thrift store furniture, and he’s a little astounded by the amount she’s accumulated in the few months she’s been in Beacon Hills. There are tarnished brass knickknacks and green glass jars lined up on the windowsills, rugs and pillows in brown and cream and rose thrown across the floor of the tiny living room. A sofa covered in amber corduroy holds pride of place there, and the fabric is worn along the arms and the back until he can see the white thread beneath the amber, but the frame of the sofa is so solid that he could probably take a blowtorch to it and not ruin it completely. The wooden table that dominates the kitchen is much the same, wood unfinished and scarred by years of use but sturdy nonetheless, and he’s reminded of the way Estere had looked at his house, her ability to see an ugly thing and proclaim that its bones are good, that it will last.

            Most nights he works at the kitchen table, pouring over files and occasionally guiltily raiding Estere’s fridge for a beer, until finally he caves and leaves ten bucks taped to her front door when he leaves for the night. She laughs so hard she coughs when she finds it the next day, but she takes the ten anyway, with a shrug and a smirk.

            Estere is rarely in her apartment when he arrives after finishing his shift, so after the third time she has to leave the bar to let him in, she gets permission from Jo Beth to have a spare key made. Jo Beth looks at Grant, accepting but still not entirely approving, and he just shakes his head. It’s not like that. He doesn’t disabuse Jo Beth of the notion that it is, though, mostly because if he’s right, if the perp is someone in the department – well, better that she tell anyone that comes asking that he’s shacking up with Estere than that he’s using her kitchen table to work on some mystery project.

            JB’s doesn’t stay open very late. Last call is at midnight, and a lot of nights Grant is still working when Estere drags herself up the stairs and through the door. The first few nights, she just looks at where he’s camped out at the kitchen table, mutters something about him locking the door behind him, and goes to fall into a limp pile on the couch without so much as taking off her boots. Midway through the first week, however, she gets curious, and instead of beelining for the living room, she joins him in the kitchen. She spends about fifteen minutes chatting idly with him before she reaches for one of the files.

            “Official police records,” Grant reminds her, in the resigned tones of a man who expects to be ignored. He’s a little surprised when she pauses, her fingers splayed against the file.

            “Thought you could use a fresh pair of eyes,” she says. When he makes an inquiring noise, she smiles at him beatifically and adds, “Your growls and grunts of manly frustration have been disturbing my beauty rest.”

            He flushes. “I can—.”

            “Get me up to speed on whatever case is giving you hives? Excellent.”

            He still hesitates, but in the end he tells her the whole of it. The past few days have been hard, not in the least because he hasn’t been able to talk about the case around the station. He’s spent those days looking at men and women he’s spent the past decade trusting to watch his back with increasing suspicion, and it’s worn on him. He trusts Estere, and it’s a moment of weakness that makes him confide in her, but he can’t regret it, not when it secures her company at the table every night after that.

            With Estere’s help, he finds a few more items missing from the evidence room, a few reports where evidence mentioned is mysteriously absent from the inventories. They work until two or three in the morning most nights, until Estere’s voice goes slow and honey-thick with drowsiness and Grant is blinking too hard and too fast in a vain attempt to keep himself awake a few minutes longer, his eyelids heavy and gritty feeling. After she joins him in working the case, he starts spending as many nights as not on her couch, desperately trying to catch a few hours of shut-eye before he has to be aware enough to work his shift. Estere emerges from her bedroom every morning long enough to shake him awake, sleep-rumpled and grumpy, wrapped in an oversized man’s wool plaid robe over the clothing she had been wearing the previous night. Some days she turns around and slumps back into her room, but some days she just crawls into the warm spot he’s left on the couch as soon as he vacates it, the robe wrapped around her like a blanket, and talks to him sleepily while he gets ready for work.

            “We’ve probably got enough for me to take this to the Sheriff,” he says as he pulls on his shoes. “At the very least, I’ve got a clear case for something being wrong. I _should_ tell him.”

            She grumbles and rolls over until she can press her face into the arm of the couch, but after a moment she responds, her voice muffled by the couch and the lingering traces of sleep. “You shouldn’t. You don’t know that he isn’t involved.”

            Grant is silent. Dawes has been good to him. Dawes was the one to hire him, and Dawes has spent the last several years making it pretty clear that he’s interested in grooming Grant to replace him as Sheriff when he eventually retires. When Sheriff Dawes comes into the bar, all the rounds are on him, and Alicia Dawes invites Grant over for dinner at least once a month, because she’s convinced that he would _eat_ if left to his own devices, but that all of his food would be dreadfully, dreadfully boring. If it wasn’t such a cliché, he would think that Dawes is the closest thing he has to a replacement father for his own mostly absent one, but it _is_ a cliché and one that does his father a disservice. Grant is a grown man. He doesn’t need a replacement dad. But if he had one, it would be Dawes.

            He doesn’t want to think that the Sheriff is involved, but he’s too good a cop not to at least entertain the possibility. Dawes had been quick to dismiss Grant when he had first tried to broach the topic at the Christmas party, and he hasn’t brought it up since. That could be a sign of innocence – surely a guilty man would welcome the opportunity to quietly sweep this whole mess under the rug – but the _possibility_ that the Sheriff is, if not involved, then turning a blind eye, still exists, and Grant can’t dismiss that possibility out of hand. He wishes like hell that he could.

            When he draws himself out of his thoughts, Estere is looking at him from beneath heavy lidded eyes, her face turned so that he cheek is pressed against the arm of the sofa. “Sorry,” she says softly, and he wonders how much of his thoughts have shown on his face. “You should talk to someone, though. Staring at the case files isn’t going to give us all the pieces of the puzzle, just a lot of long nights and not a lot of sleeping. You’ve got to start poking around at work.”

            She’s right, but knowing that she’s right doesn’t keep him from feeling – wistful, almost. Shifting from the files to legwork means less nights spread out at Estere’s table, and the hard lump of regret in the pit of his stomach lasts right up until she says, “I’ll keep an eye out at the bar, ask a few questions. Come back tonight and we’ll compare notes,” before rolling over and going back to sleep.

            Grant is smiling a little as he leaves her apartment.

 

*

 

            Unfortunately, neither the station nor the bar yields immediate results, although two days later Dawes calls Grant into his office to make careful remarks about how tired he looks and even more careful remarks about how the excitement of a new relationship shouldn’t lead a man to neglect his health. They’re both silently mortified by the end of the conversation, and Grant is forced to reassess his dismissal of Dawes as a replacement father figure, because he doesn’t remember being this embarrassed when his real dad had given him the sex talk the summer he had turned fourteen.

            He almost tells Dawes then, but in the end he doesn’t. He can’t trust Dawes to be a good man just because Dawes has been good to _him_ , and that stings. The stress of looking at everyone around him with suspicion is starting to wear on him as badly as the sleepless nights. That evening, Estere gets off her shift at JB’s to find him with his face planted on his notes and his eyes closed. He suspects he was snoring, because there’s the distinctive smirk she wears when she’s finding amusement at someone else’s expense on her lips when she wakes him. “You’ve got a little,” she gestures vaguely to her cheek, then reaches out to rub a thumb over his, “ink, right here.” He’s still a little befuddled from his abortive attempt at a nap, but not so befuddled that his hindbrain doesn’t helpfully note that her fingers are warm from the heater Jo Beth blasts down in the bar. “Maybe tonight we should turn in early. Not for your sake, for mine. I’m a bad, bad person, and if you keep falling asleep in unexpected places around my apartment, I _will_ give into the temptation to draw a penis on your face. Then I’ll feel guilty. There may be tears. Guilty tears.”

            Her hand is still cupping his face, and he’s aware that the absent stroke of her thumb against the five o’clock shadow decorating his cheeks has been going on far too long for her to really claim that she’s trying to erase the traces of ink on his skin. He clears his throat. “They’d have a field day with that down at the station tomorrow.”

            “Could be a public service,” she mutters, low enough that he thinks she’s talking to herself. “You need something to make you a bit less stupid handsome.” She steps away hastily after that and goes over to the ‘fridge, leaving him with nothing to do but consider her back and stew in his own confusion.

            “Speaking of the station,” she says a moment later, still not looking at him, “I found something that might be useful. Last night, one of the evidence clerks came in – Jonas Stan-something? – and he was buying rounds. A _lot_ of rounds. Like, more rounds than I would think someone on a government salary could easily afford. I asked him what the special occasion was, and he just said, ‘It’s a beautiful night! And you’re a beautiful person! And I’m a beautiful person!’ Mind you, he was more than three sheets to the wind at that point. He doesn’t come in a lot during my shift, though, and I wanted to check with the daytime bartender before I said anything.”

            “Jonas Stanfield,” Grant says. He rubs a hand over his eyes and shoves himself into a more upright position. “He works swing shift in the evidence room. What did the daytime bartender say?”

            “Right, Stanfield.” She closes the refrigerator door without taking anything, and comes back to lean against the table. “He’s been coming in days, and he’s buying rounds and top shelf bottles then, too.”

            “Jo Beth marks up her top shelf liquor,” Grant says. “She doesn’t like to get out the step stool, and none of the regulars order it.”

            Estere beams at him. “I like to think that she charges extra for the thin patina of dust and bar grime that comes with every bottle.”

            “I’ll talk to Stanfield tomorrow. See if he lets anything slip.”

            “Good,” Estere says. “You can tell me all about it when I get back in a couple days.”

            “Back?”

            “Alan is hooking me up with another out of town job. We leave tomorrow morning. Shouldn’t take too long. You can keep using my place while I’m gone, and I’ll be back in time to watch you arrest Stanfield.” She smiles at him, then sketches a vague salute in his direction. “I’m going to crash, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you’d better do the same. You need anything before I go?”

            “No,” Grant says. “Nothing.”

 

*

 

            Estere is gone by the time Grant wakes up in the morning, her red leather jacket missing from its habitual place on the back of one of the kitchen chairs and the apartment quiet and still. He doesn’t have to wonder how she avoided waking him – he was dead tired – but he glances into her bedroom just to make sure. There’s no lump at the center of the bed, and the edges of the thick gray-and-scarlet wool blanket are tucked under the mattress in hospital corners, an odd piece of neatness against the books spilling off of the room’s second-hand bookshelf and the suitcase lying open and unpacked near the closet door. The hatbox Estere had carried with her the night they first met is balanced precariously on the bedside table, and Grant is a little tempted to snoop, but he has more respect than that. He leaves the box where it is, and closes the bedroom door.

            He’s a little late getting to the station, and it’s noon before he can so much as peek into the evidence room. Stanfield isn’t there, but that’s to be expected; swing shift doesn’t come on until four. Grant waits until he’s finished his work and forces himself to wait a little longer, because everyone knows that Undersheriff Stilinski doesn’t leave the station until well after the rest of the day shift is gone, and sometimes not even then if they’re short staffed. There’s no use in raising anyone’s flags, not until he has something concrete.

            At seven o’clock on the nose, he packs up his things and goes down to the evidence locker. Jonas Stanfield is seated at the desk inside the narrow front office, a young man too tall and too burly for the space he finds himself in, the cage and the rows of shelves creating a gaping cavern behind him, lit intermittently by the blaze of fluorescent light bulbs. Stanfield’s uniform stretches tight over his stomach when he stands to greet Grant, but his arms are corded in muscle. Grant remembers that Stanfield played for the lacrosse team over at Beacon Hills High, before he had graduated and moved up to the sheriff’s department; like most of the town, Grant still attends the games when he can find the time, even years after his own graduation. Stanfield had been a good, if not particularly inspired player.

            He keeps his smile friendly as he comes to stand near Stanfield’s desk. The way that Stanfield tenses at Grant’s approach is almost confirmation enough on its own.

            “Hey, Stanfield,” Grant says. His voice is calm, casual. This isn’t his first time questioning a suspect, even if those suspects aren’t usually part of the department and even though they’re usually safely ensconced in one of the station’s interrogation rooms, and he knows how to keep a man off balance, how to come at someone like he’s their best friend in the world before knocking them in the back of the head with a well-timed question or comment. “How’s the day treating you?”

            Stanfield looks wary. Grant isn’t sure if that makes him smart enough to sense the trap or just guilty enough to expect one. “Good. It treated me... good. Well. Sir. Thank you.”

            He’s practically sweating. Grant doesn’t think it’ll take much to push him over the edge and into a full confession. A few days of ‘just dropping by,’ a few comments about things gone missing and how the Sheriff is turning an eye inward, toward the department. “Great. Good. I’m glad to hear it. Listen, would you mind double-checking the inventory on the Hutchison case and sending me up a report? Deputy Bridges thought some of the numbers might be off, and I told her I would check them personally.”

            The Hutchison case had been a jewelry heist almost four months ago. Becky Bridges had taken lead on it. When Grant had asked careful questions about the discrepancies between her report and the evidence locker’s inventory, she had just seemed confused. Bridges is young, but she’s a good officer and a legacy like Grant; he doesn’t think she’s involved.

            Stanfield swallows hard enough that Grant can see his Adam’s apple bob painfully. Grant doesn’t feel triumphant at the small victory. Mostly he feels grim. He doesn’t want to be right, not on this one. He wants to find who did it, but he doesn’t want that person to be one of his own. His _wants_ don’t could for much.

            “No, sir,” Stanfield says. “I mean, no problem. I’ll have it on your desk by morning.”

            Grant forces another smile. “Thanks.”

            He’s out of the room and almost to the elevators when he hears something – Stanfield is swearing softly to himself. Grant isn’t even sure why he stops, not until he hears Stanfield say quietly, “Pick up, you bastard. Come _on_.”

            The elevator pings as it opens, and leaves without Grant. He stays there and listens, makes sure to keep the soft in-and-out puff of his breathing as quiet as possible.

            Stanfield doesn’t greet whoever he’s calling by name. Grant isn’t fortunate enough for that. What he does say, voice low and harsh, is, “The Undersheriff was just here. He knows it was me. Yes, I’m sure!”

            A pause.

            “He was asking questions about the evidence in the Harrison case. You said this would be easy money, that no one would know. I don’t think I can—.”

            Another.

            “Okay,” Stanfield says, and releases a shaky breath. “Fine. You’re right. Look, we’ll talk about it later, okay? I need to get back to work. Undersheriff Stilinski is expecting an inventory of the evidence tagged on the Harrison case.”

            Grant waits, but when it becomes clear that the conversation is over, he slips silently through the door leading to the staircase, which he closes with care behind him.

            There’s more than one of them in on it. More than one of the department’s people, _his_ people, stealing evidence and burglarizing his apartment and office in search of the files he’s kept, breaking so many laws that Grant can barely keep up with the tally.

            Jonas Stanfield will break if Grant leans on him. He’s sure of that. A day, maybe two, and Stanfield will turn on his co-conspirator.

            It should feel like a win. This is what he and Estere have spent so many long nights looking for, and the biggest break he’s had in the case so far. It should feel like he’s winning.

            It doesn’t, not really.

 

*

 

            That night, it rains.

            Grant sits in Estere’s apartment and watches the rain cut slick paths through the encrusted grime on the kitchen windows. His earlier discomfort has faded, and he feels content, both because he’s not the one dealing with traffic stops tonight (California drivers, in spite of years of practice, do not know how to deal with weather – any kind of weather – and the first rain after a dry spell always means collisions; oil on the roads and lead feet on the gas pedals ensure that) and because he rests easy in the knowledge that this whole nightmare with the department will be over soon enough. He’s not happy with the outcome, with the thought of locking away a coworker, maybe even a friend, but it’s better than the alternative.

            Solving the case will also mean fewer nights spent at Estere’s kitchen table, true, but—maybe. She’d called him handsome, before she’d left, and he’ll talk to her when she gets back and when Stanfield and whoever he’s working with are behind bars. _Maybe_ is the best shot Grant has had with her so far. He’ll take it.

            In the morning, after a restless night spent half-dozing on Estere’s couch, he returns to the station to find its occupants tense and grim.

            Sometime during the previous night’s downpour, Jonas Stanfield was killed, shot in the back of the head and left to rot in the mud under a bridge not half a mile away from the station’s front doors.

 

*

 

            “It’s a bad job,” Dawes says, when Grant joins him at the crime scene. He looks old and tired. The Sheriff rarely comes out to scenes these days, especially not when the damp has probably kept him awake and his joints alive with pain most of the night before, but this is a cop killing, and the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department isn’t so large that Dawes hadn’t personally hired Stanfield, hadn’t known his name and face and badge number.

            “A real bad job,” Dawes mutters. He runs a hand through his thick while hair, and steps a little further out onto the swampy ground under the bridge. His rain boots squelch wetly into the mud and stick.

            “Yes, sir,” Grant murmurs, and says very little else.

 

*

 

            By the end of the day, there’s mud on Grant’s shoes. His uniform is sodden.

            He stops by his house to pick up clean, dry clothes for the next day.

            Someone has jimmied the lock on his back door. It looks like it took some doing, because had had _listened_ when Estere told him to buy better locks, and the wood around the doorknob is splintered. This time, Grant doesn’t wait for backup before going in. The house is quiet and still; nothing seems to have been disturbed.

            Grant knows better, although he’s troubled to realize that he _doesn’t_ know when the break-in might’ve happened. He can’t remember the last time he was home for more than a few minutes at a time. For all he knows, this most recent intrusion could have transpired a week ago or last night, gun powder still on the killer’s hands, mud on his shoes. If the later is true, then he wiped down the floors before leaving. There’s no sign of anyone but Grant having tracked dirty footprints across the gleaming hardwood floors.

            He gathers the things he came for and returns to Estere’s apartment over the bar.

            Once he’s there, he pours himself a drink, settles into his customary chair at the kitchen table, and can’t bring himself to move from it. His skin feels chilled and clammy even as the uniform begins to dry, but more than that, he’s bone weary and sad. When the key to the front door grinds in the lock and the door swings open a few hours later, he barely moves to acknowledge Estere.

            For a moment, she stands in the door to the kitchen, her hands on her hips and an imperious upwards tilt to one of her brows. “Jeez, Stilinski. Is this what you do every time I’m out of town? I know it’s hard to live without the shining joy of my daily presence, but I thought you’d soldier on better than this.”

            Grant doesn’t smile, although he almost wants to. “I thought you’d be gone longer.” His voice is a raspy croak, as if he’s spent days in silence instead of hours.

            The humor on her face darkens into concern, and she tries to hide it behind a smile. When she steps into the room, she’s cautious, like a woman approaching some wild thing she’s happened upon unexpectedly. “The job didn’t take as long as expected.” She comes to a stop next to his chair. Her hair and the shoulders of her jacket are damp; it must be raining again. She looks almost as tired as he feels, shadows like blue-black smudges of ink painted beneath her eyes. Those eyes don’t match the smile on her lips or the casual tone of her voice, but for once Grant is too tired to try to decipher her.

            “Are you okay?” she asks. “Did something happen? Because you don’t look okay.”

            “Jonas Stanfield is dead,” he says. It’s almost a relief to say it. “I talked to him last night. About the case. He let it slip that he has a partner, and he was dead before morning.”

            She barely reacts, and he’s idiotically grateful to her for that. Her mouth purses, but that’s about it. Instead of responding to his words, she reaches out to brush her knuckles against his cheek. “You’re chilled through,” she says, and he thinks he would crack if she had tried to gentle her tone, but she just sounds vaguely irritated. “How long have you been sitting here? Come on. Let’s get you out of that wet clothing.”

            He reaches up and catches her wrist when she goes to pull away. Her fingers are warm against his skin, even though she just came in from outside. She stills, and he can’t read the look on her face.

            “I keep thinking,” he says, “that this could’ve been avoided. If I had just gone to Dawes with my suspicions, or if I had arrested Stanfield last night instead of waiting to see if he would roll over on his accomplice. He didn’t have to die. He was a crook and a thief, but he shouldn’t have died. He didn’t deserve—it didn’t have to go down like it did.”

            Her dark eyes are watchful and her expression remains carefully blank, but her voice is firm. “This wasn’t your fault,” she says, and she sounds so sure that he just about believes her. There’s something about Estere, like she can make things true by wanting them enough, just by putting enough will and enough temper into the words. “You couldn’t have known. _This wasn’t your fault_.”

            She wavers over the last few words, and for the first time it occurs to him that the impassive set of her features might be masking concern. He thinks of how this must look, her coming home from her trip to find him sitting and soaking and drinking at her kitchen table, and actually sort of admires her calm. He’s not sure he would have done half so well.

            He doesn’t think he can manage much in the way of comfort, but he strokes his thumb absentmindedly over the underside of her wrist. “It might have been,” he says, “but don’t worry. I’m fine.” He’s not even quite sure what he’s saying. He feels weighted down by the water in his clothes and by Stanfield’s death, and he wants nothing more than to lean in and rest his forehead against the damp leather of her jacket, take what comfort _he_ can there. He doesn’t. He’s still not sure of his welcome, and this – whatever it is between them, friendship or something else – still feels too fragile to really test.

            A brief flicker of frustration finally cracks her cool. “Of course I worry,” she says, and before he’s quite sure what’s going on, _she’s_ the one leaning in. Her lips are warm and a little chapped against his, pressing hard like she can slide her conviction from her tongue to his, breathe it into him by sharing air and space. Her free hand comes up to rest against the back of his neck, strong fingers holding him in place, as if there’s any chance that he’ll try to get free.

            It’s a first kiss, determined and urgent but still a little clumsy. Estere makes a faint noise and pulls away, but she’s back a moment later, and this time – this time, Christ, their mouths slot together perfectly, wet and hot, and he’s letting go of her wrist so that he can rest his hands on the curve of her hips. Her shirt slides up a little, and there’s a sliver of smooth skin against his palms along with the rough denim of her jeans. He tugs her closer, up against the edge of the chair and between his knees.

            He’s tired – he’s still so tired – but it’s hard to focus on that past the rub of her lips against his, the tease of her tongue at the corner of his mouth, the warmth of her skin beneath his hands. It feels like a revelation. It feels like breaking, like simmering heat held tight beneath the pads of his fingers and behind his eyes, curling low in his gut. It feels like he’s waited _forever_ for this, even knowing that it might not even happen, even only having known her for a few scant months. He’s thirty-two years old and no innocent, but kissing Estere feels like the kind of thing that erases the kisses and touches that came before it, the kind of thing that anyone who comes after will have trouble living up to.

            When she breaks the kiss, her pupils are blown wide and dark, and her breathing is harsh. Her mouth is red and the skin around it is pink enough that he suspects she’s rubbed herself a little raw against the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave away in the morning. He should feel bad about that, but he doesn’t. He likes the idea of leaving a mark on her, of making an impression. He likes that she wants this, if not as much as he does (because he has a hard time imagining anyone wanting anything as much as he wants her), then enough.

            He’s imagined this a thousand times and a thousand different ways, but never like this. His imagination has never stretched far enough to picture Estere as the one left dazed and wanting, her cheeks flushed and something a little lost in the way she looks at him. He skims his hands up and over the curve of her ribs, partially because he needs it and partially just to listen to the way her breath catches in her throat.

            He traces the edge of her bra with his fingers, and she leans in to press a fast, hard kiss into his mouth. “Okay,” she says, so softly that he’s not sure if he’s meant to hear it or not. “Okay. Yeah.” Her hand is still at the nape of his neck, and she pulls at him until he rises from the chair and stands in front of her. She looks more focused now, gazing up at him through sooty lashes as her fingers stroke absently against the skin right below his hairline. “Come on,” she murmurs, and her hand slips down over his shoulder and to his elbow, until she can tug him along in her wake as she steps out of the kitchen.

            They stop a few times on the way to the bedroom, kissing pressed up against the wall or the edge of the couch or the door. By the time Estere pulls him down onto her meticulously made bed, she’s moaning against his mouth and his skin feels too hot against the sodden fabric of his uniform.

            They don’t speak much after that, other than Estere whispering quiet demands into the dark silence of the room, like, “off, take them off,” and, “yes, there, like that.” She laughs when she goes to bite a kiss into his hip and ends up with strands of her own glorious hair tangled in her mouth, and the sound vibrates through him, makes his hips roll and his hands reach out to pull her up his body and over him.

            She laughs again, this time against his cheek. She grinds down against him, slow and easy, and he’s tangled a hand in her hair when he hears her say, “I’m bad for you.” She nips at his jaw, a quick sting that she soothes away a moment later with her tongue. “I’ve got wheels on me, and I am so bad for you, but what the hell? No one will be able to say you didn’t enjoy the ride.”

            “Shush,” Grant says, and pulls her in for another kiss.

 

*

 

            In the morning, Estere maneuvers him into her oversized wool robe and pulls a t-shirt over her own head before they go out into the kitchen. Her legs stretch out from beneath the hem of the shirt, all warm tawny skin and lean muscles against the thin white fabric. He watches her move around the kitchen while she makes coffee, really _looks_ at her, and tries to come to terms with the idea that maybe now it’s okay to look.

            His files are still spread out across the table, and he stares at them for a moment before saying, “Maybe you should stop helping me on the case.”

            She pauses in what she’s doing, fingers stretched to reach a pair of chipped mugs in the cupboard. When she turns to face him, he can practically see the cogs spinning in her head, and he knows her well enough by now to be wary.

            “Because that deputy died?” she asks. “Because whoever is behind this is dangerous?”

            “He – or she – shot Stanfield in the back of the head,” Grant says.

            A strange little smile tilts her lips. It’s not one he’s seen before: hard along the edges, with none of her usual humor. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m a lot more dangerous than either Stanfield or our mystery friend. Don’t you fret about me.” She turns back toward the mugs, like that’s the end of the conversation, but then she glances over her shoulder at him and her expression softens. “We’re in this together, Stilinski. Whatever happens, we’re in it together.”

            He catches her gaze, and slowly he nods. “I guess we are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Known on [Tumblr](http://things-with-teeth.tumblr.com/) as: "Guys, I have all of these feelings about not-even-secondary characters, even though neither of them have canonical first names and we know next to nothing about Stiles' mom! Let me write to you about my feelings! Their love is Great and True (But Not Even A Little Bit Pure)! They fight crime!"
> 
> But that would make a terrible fic title.


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